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Couple sell everything to serve Haitians

A Nashville-area surgeon and his wife are giving up the good life to fulfill a dream they've had since they were high school sweethearts in the 1970s.

Dr. David Vanderpool and wife Laurie are selling their Brentwood, Tenn. home so they can move to Haiti and work at an orphanage. They run the non-profit organization Mobile Medical Disaster Relief.(Photo: George Walker IV, The Tennessean)

Story Highlights

Dr. David Vanderpool was trauma surgeon in Texas before opening vein clinic in Tennessee

Vanderpools bought 63 acres outside of Port-au-Prince where they will live and work

BRENTWOOD, Tenn. -- We're supposed to work hard, make money and retire well. Right? That's the American dream.

For 40 years, Dr. David Vanderpool and his wife, Laurie, of Brentwood, have had another dream.

The Vanderpools are selling everything and moving to Haiti to serve medical, educational and spiritual needs.

"I've been giddy since September when we made the decision to go," said Laurie Stallings Vanderpool. "We're being promoted to something really grand."

Vanderpool is selling LaveMD, his Brentwood practice that fixes varicose veins and does aesthetic treatments such as liposuction and Botox.

They have a contract to sell their home. They're giving away or selling the contents. They're also selling three cars and a farm in Dickson.

The Vanderpools, who recently announced their decision, have dreamed about doing this since they were high school sweethearts in the '70s in Texas. As they raised their three children in Texas and in Brentwood, mission trips were constant. With their youngest now a freshman at Texas A&M, the time to move is now.

"It's sad that it shocks people," said Cheryl Reed, a longtime friend who has been on 16 trips around the world with Vanderpool's Live Beyond medical mission nonprofit.

"They make us think," Reed said. "They're so bold, so courageous."

During his 20-plus years as a trauma surgeon in Texas, Vanderpool held indigent clinics on the weekends, with the whole family helping. They moved to Tennessee in 2000. Three years later, he opened LaveMD to fund missions and to have a more controllable schedule to allow for multiple mission trips per year.

Vanderpool started medical missions to Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake. Since then, Live Beyond, formerly called Mobile Medical Disaster Relief, bought 63 acres in Thomazeau, an area outside Port-au-Prince with about 200,000 residents, where the Vanderpools will live and work.

Conversation with Vanderpool, 53, is often challenging and ends with, "You should come with us."

"Here we are, the most affluent country and we're obese," he said. "Go two hours off our border and 80 percent of the children don't get enough food.

"We spend money on ourselves," he said. "We're Pharisees."

Basic human needs

A guesthouse for mission workers is almost finished, which will allow for 30-person team trips twice a month. It will be the Vanderpools' home until they can build a little cottage. Phase 1 of a 40-bed hospital will start building in July. Then they plan to expand the size of the orphanage there, which now houses 50 children. They also want to expand a new maternal health program, which now serves 200 women.

"We want to double the school and quintuple the orphanage," Vanderpool said.

The focus is on health care, clean water and food -- the most basic of human needs.

Water filtration systems -- a project backed by singer Brad Paisley and his wife, actress Kimberly-Williams Paisley -- now filter about 50,000 gallons a day. "They've shown enormous generosity," Vanderpool said of the Paisleys. "Every day, our Haitian team installs two water projects." A recent cholera outbreak farther north didn't affect Thomazeau.

Eventually, they also plan to build housing for people with special needs, a population that's all but abandoned. It will be named Johnny's House after Laurie's late brother, who had Down syndrome.

The Paisleys were ready to donate. But Vanderpool wanted more; he wanted them to come.

"You see such delight and joy in them," said Kimberly Williams-Paisley, who has worked with Laurie in the scabies and wound clinic on two trips. "She blows me away. She hugs and kisses and loves them without fear."

Family focus

The Vanderpools' young adult children -- David Stallings, John Mark and Jacklyn -- will join their parents in Haiti for Christmas. "We've made a habit of that," Laurie said. Her father, longtime Alabama and NFL football coach Gene Stallings, and her mom and sisters may join them, too.

Gene Stallings, who has been to Haiti twice, has become an advocate for his son-in-law's and daughter's work. On his own, he's raised about $450,000 for the cause.

This summer, once oldest son David ends his time in Afghanistan teaching sustainable farming, he will do the same in Haiti, focusing on a coffee farm. Jacklyn, a freshman at Texas A&M, also will join them. John Mark, a junior at Texas A&M, will be in Jordan this summer. He helped organize a Live Beyond medical team to send to West, Texas, after last week's explosion at a fertilizer factory.

"For 20 years as a family, my kids grew up with it," Vanderpool said of mission work. "It was normal for them. They didn't realize it was nuts."

Like family, longtime friends Cheryl Reed and Elisabeth Loyd were not surprised when the Vanderpools announced the move.

At 62, Reed and her husband, Morris, 66, have new retirement plans. Reed, a nurse, has been on 16 trips with Live Beyond. Morris Reed is chairman of the Live Beyond board of directors. In a few years, they plan to live in Haiti for about half the year and half the year here downsized to a condo.

That wasn't the plan early in her life. "I thought my calling was to be a mom," she said. "It's evolved. I love how He sneaks up on me."

During her first trip in 2011, Loyd remembers never being so dirty, so hot, so tired … and so happy.

"Not a day goes by that I don't think about the people, say a prayer," she said.

Giving away possessions

The Vanderpools are giving away possessions to friends and family and storing a few sentimental things, like Laurie's memory boxes for her children, with family. The rest, they'll figure out as they go along.

"I've told my sisters, if there's anything you've ever seen of mine that you like, take it," Laurie said.

Laurie plans to bring six pairs of khaki capris and her signature white blouses. They'll have use of a generator, so they'll bring a few things for the kitchen, such as a George Foreman grill and a hot pot for water. "It's hard to forecast, but I never want to have to buy anything again," Laurie said.

With Live Beyond board meetings, speaking engagements and their oldest child's wedding in August, the Vanderpools will come back to the United States some

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They'll keep a post office box at the Live Beyond offices, which are moving this week to rent-free office space on Belmont University's campus. Three staffers work there on communications, fundraising and mission-trip coordination

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Their hope is that all the money from selling the house and practice would fund not only their expenses, but more projects.